Me, my sister and I
by Mariana-chan
Summary: Megumi, Kaoru, Misao and Tsubame are all sisters. They live in an almost perfect little worl, until of course something happened to justify the existence of this fic! Something along the lines of falling in love and fighting for it....


Hi! I know, I haven't been working much these past months... You see, this is my last high-school year and I have to work my *ss off to get into the college I want. Law school here I go (hopefully)!

So, you'll have to forgive me if I don't update my other fics as quick as you and I would like. I'm working on the new chapter of my crossover and I have two or three new ideas to develop.

This is kind of an experiment for me, because I'm writing this fic on the 1st person. This is basically the cover chapter, where I present you the characters' history and so on (you know the drill). Please read my comment on the end...

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Me, my sisters and I

_"All men want to be a woman's first love. That's their disastrous vanity. Women have a safer sense of things. What they like is to be a man's last love."_

Oscar Wilde

It's not easy to belong to a family that defies any normality. Actually, it wasn't until very late in my life that I started looking at it as my family or a family to begin with! For starters, I grew up in a women's house. It's not so bad, considering I'm myself a woman; so we were five women living in the same house. I was my mother's third child, from her third marriage. Before me (and my father, I must say) came two husbands and a child for each. After my father passed away, my mother remarried and my younger sister was born.

So, my mother (who is called Yumi, by the way) first married when she was barely eighteen to an older doctor called Takani Isao. My mother tells us that they met when she broke her ankle playing tennis and he had attended her. She says they fell in love at first sight. Well, it's possible, because they married and right after it my older sister, Megumi, was born. I'll talk about her later.

If it was love at first sight or not, I don't know, but I do know that they got divorced a month before Megumi's first birthday. My mother was then twenty, almost twenty-one. By that time, my mother's sister, Tokyo, married a policeman, my uncle Saitoh. One day my uncles gave a large lunch-party and my mother met her second husband there. Kamiya Kamo was a kempo instructor at the police station where Saitoh worked as a detective. After a short period of dating, they married. Maybe the rushed marriage had something to do with my mother's enlarged belly. My mother was still twenty-one when my sister Kaoru was born.

My aunt Tokio once told me that she never again saw or heard such hideous and blood-curling screams as when my mother and Kaoru's father argued, what apparently happened frequently. It all ended when Kamiya-san received a business proposal to teach kempo in Brazil, where he still lives with his present wife. He and Kaoru have vacations together twice a year!

Then, out of nowhere, my mother decided to start working and using her degree in PR. So, she applied to a job opening and started working at a large building firm, owned by my father, Makimachi Taishio. I would love to say that my mother acted rationally and thought everything over, before re-marrying… again!! But no, she and my father married when she was just twenty-two and yours truly was born within a year.

My mother seemed to settle, with her rich husband. My sisters and him got along fine, I was a happy baby and everyone thought that our lives were set. Of course, as I've learned, nothing is written in stone and, when I was almost four years old, my father died victim of a stupid car crash. All the family deeply mourned his loss; my father left a will where I was his prime beneficiary, although he left quite a sum of money to my mother and sisters.

But of course my mother couldn't stay widow at twenty-seven, so a year later she married the owner of a large chain of restaurants called Akabeto, Sanjô Haiji. This time my mother took two years to get pregnant, with the last girl, who was named Tsubame. Because of his business Haiji never spent much time at home with us, but it came as a shock when he left us for an older and famous writer.

I remember when I went to school that all my friends would want to know how I and my sisters all had different last names, being sisters at the same time. Once or twice a teacher who had been my older sisters' teacher would call me Takani or Kamiya and I would have to gently call to their attention that my name was Makimachi.

My sisters and me grew up almost like every other girl, learning to look out for each other, what sometimes greatly annoyed my mother. We all learned to count on each other, but our parents were only called to business when we couldn't avoid it. Megumi's father had always been a complete work-aholic and sometimes they wouldn't see each other for weeks or otherwise they would go out for dinner once or twice a week, between his shifts. Kaoru's father was still in Brazil, almost on the other side of the planet, and would sometimes send her a weird statue of a fertility goddess or something he was crazy about at the time. Their vacations were set on Christmas and summer break and they would go on for two weeks at the most, because Kaoru couldn't stand her stepmother. Tsubame's father would sometimes pop-up, out of nowhere, but I regret to inform that neither of us was ever happy to see him. He would send Tsubame a birthday card, when he remembered. Basically, my father's grave was always the most present of them all.

I would love to say that our mother fought to make up for our fathers' lack of presence, but she didn't. She has always been the typical rich hen that goes out with her friends, shops, exchanges gossip and returns home to leave half and hour later for a party or a cocktail. All four of us were raised by our "nannies": Megumi's grandfather, Genzai-san, and my grandfather, Jiya. They would sometimes spend the entire night with us, when we were kids, waiting for my mother to return. I remember that once or twice they tried talking to her, to try and convince her that she had to be more present in our up bringing. It never worked.

But it all turned out nice and smooth. Well, that is, until one year. That year destiny hit us all hard and then watched to see how we dealt with it. It was my last high-school year, a month or two away from my eighteenth birthday. Megumi was twenty-two, almost finishing her doctor's degree, which she had choose because of her grandfather (even if her father continuously repeated it was his good advises that did the charm), and Kaoru was nineteen. She had decided that she would take her degree later in life and that year she started working in a known gymnasium, teaching kempo (but she was indeed influenced by her father), something that always been her dream. Tsubame was eleven, starting real school.

I had always known that that year would be hard for me, because when I reached adulthood I would inherit my father's wealth as well as the business. Okina had been taking care of the firm for all those years, with some help, but always hoped I would someday head it, like my father had. But the entire 'building market' never did fascinate me and I planned on choosing dramatic arts. When I made my choice known my mother's lack of opinion worked as everything about her did: it had no effect whatsoever. My sisters wished me luck, my aunt Tokio talked for hours with me, telling me to rethink it, and my grandfather stopped talking to me for three days. So this was more or less the way things went on…

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24th November 2002…

I only got home very late in the afternoon that day, because I had to do some research for history. Megumi was in the living room, studying from an enormous volume and taking lots of notes. Tsubame was in the playroom, watching cartoons. I asked her how her day had gone – it was a small ritual between her and me: she would tell me her day and I would tell her mine. Apparently she had met a new boy that had moved there and had started school in her class. I couldn't help but tease her about her shining eyes and excited look: I discovered there the signs of a first crush. But she changed subject, asking me about my day.

It hadn't been a good day at all! Jiya was still refusing to talk to me and my teachers were killing us with work. Tsubame smiled.

"Well, nee-san, don't worry so much. I'm sure everything will be perfect! Jiya call today, don't worry, and he asked to talk to you."

"He did?" I couldn't help but be excited! He was almost my father and my mother and I was so used to having him by my side that when he wasn't I missed him terribly. "What did he say?"

"Well, you'll have to wait for Kaoru, because she was the one that talked to him." Tsubame answered, returning to her cartoons.

"Where is Kaoru, anyway?"

"She's working, silly. Remember, she starts today?" Oh, yeah! I had almost forgotten. She had dragged all of us a week before to see the gymnasium and to tell her what we thought. Megumi had found it extremely hard to stop staring at a guy who was punching a sandbag, so she didn't say much. Tsubame had been snatched by the entrance clerk, who stuffed her with sugar, so Kaoru was stuck with me. It was a huge gymnasium, really modern and new and filled with hotties, as Megumi said. She had finally stopped staring at the guy, when he had looked around, sensing someone looking at him, and had grinned at her. Megumi had always hated to be caught doing something like staring and she hated that guys got all smug when she stared. When we had left, he passed by us and waved goodbye to her, which made her blush to the roots of her hair.

I decided to see what Megumi was studying, while waiting for Kaoru to return. The large volume in her hand said 'Anatomy IV' and her knotted brows said 'I'm sick of being here!'. Megumi had always been an 'A' student, the pride of the family! Jiya would sometimes compare my marks with hers, trying to stimulate me. But I think I was never cut out for dumping loads of information in to my brain, along with complicated expressions that I would never use again in my chosen future. So, basically Megumi was the 'formal knowledge' of the family.

"How long have you been studying that?" I asked, sitting near her on a sofa. She looked at her wristwatch.

"Almost four hours." She answered, sighing.

"Christ, Meg! Chill out for a while. You need to relax. You can't come directly home from college to study."

"Why not? I've been doing it for the last three years." She said, with a sad face.

"More reason for you not to do it now." I closed her book and her notepad. "Look, why don't you grab your car and go to that gymnasium where Kaoru's working. You could sign up for a few classes and get some of that stress out of yourself!" The look on her face when I mentioned the gymnasium wasn't lost to me. "Who knows? Maybe you'll end up finding some hottie to help you… ease off."

"Mi-chan!" She replied, laughing.

"What? Don't tell me you think the same thing?" I finally managed to convince her to joint the gymnasium, but that day she opted for staying home and just rest. Kaoru didn't arrive much later, but she went straight to the bathroom to take a much-needed bath. She only came out in time for dinner. She looked absolutely torn!

"You look tired, Kaoru." Megumi pointed, serving herself from the salad.

"You have no idea how hard it is to give an hour and a half of basic kempo to children! And because I'm just starting I have to work with an older teacher, to supervise me. And I have all this tension and expectations on my back, because of my dad's name, and he's just so good with the kids!"

"Who? Your father?" I asked. Kamiya Kamo hadn't ever mistreated any child, but he had never struck me as 'child-lover'.

"No! The teacher who's supervising me. I had this little girl who almost started crying by the end of the class, saying she couldn't do it. I felt so bad! I thought I was going to fast for them and she was really desperate. And he talked to her for five minutes and joked around a bit and she was smiling by the time I dismissed class!"

"Did he say anything to you about it?" Megumi asked, concerned.

"Well, I asked him if I was going to fast and how the girl felt and he…" Kaoru blushed a little, "he said I was doing fine, that I just had to play a little with the younger ones."

"He seems nice, ne?" Tsubame said.

"Oh, he is. He has this really nice smile and he's very polite! He calls me Kaoru-dono! I told him to drop the –dono part, but it seems his brain can't process that part of the information." We all laughed at the comparison. "And he has these amazing purple eyes and… you'll never believe it, but he has orange hair!"

"It can't be real!" I said. I remembered a girl that was in my English class that dyed her hair blood red, so why not orange.

"Well, I just have to ask him, but he looks so… er, humble I think is the best word to describe him, you know? I just don't see him dying his hair orange, but I've just met him."

"Well, he has made quite an impression on you, my dear sister!" Megumi teased. That night mother wasn't eating with us, because she had been invited to another cocktail. Our dinners with her were always tenser than these ones, when we could tease each other and joke around.

I remembered then to ask Kaoru what Jiya had said.

"Oh, right! Well, he said he wanted to talk to you about the firm."

"Oh for Christ sake! The man doesn't talk to me for days and when he does it's about that damn firm?!"

"Relax, he said something about organizing a dinner-party, just to introduce you to the people who run your money." Kaoru said.

"What?" She had to be joking! There was no way in hell that an almost eighteen year old Misao would be meeting those bores! I just wanted to have fun, carry on with my dancing lessons and have good marks at school! I never did spend much of the money my father had left me. My tastes never were very expensive, so I didn't understand why I had to meet those guys!

"Calm down, Mi-chan." Megumi advised. "You've been searching for a way to make peace with Okina." That was the way Kaoru and her called him. "Why don't you dress nice and have dinner with those men? You won't have to give up any of your choices, for the business, and you'll be making your grandfather happy at the same time." It wasn't such a bad idea. "Who says that all business men have to be total bores? And your grandfather is right, you know. If you don't plan on working there in the future and you intend on having someone else running the firm, once your grandfather passes away, you'll want someone trusted doing it, don't you? Even if you start working as a dancer or as an actress, you'll still need the money from your firm! You can't leave it in the hands of someone who you don't know and might rob you!"

I had to admit she was totally right! A hundred and tem percent right… as most of the times! After dinner I called Jiya and, after kind of making up, I told him to arrange for that dinner-party or something of the kind. I was happy, I think, and he told me to count on it on the week that came next. So, this was the first step to a total upside-down year…

So, what do you think?

I have some questions that I would love to ask you all:

I was thinking that perhaps you'd like for the narrator to change from chapter to chapter. But please keep in mind that it will only change between Misao, Kaoru and Megumi and that my limited specialty is and always will be Misao and Aoshi, so other couples are kind of new to me.

2- I don't know if the name of Kaoru, Megumi, Misao and Tsubame's fathers' are known. I researched a bit, but if they are, please inform me and I'll change it (I would appreciate it if you'd supply a web-site where I could crosscheck it, please).

3- The long story 'Under the Cherry Tree' is finished! Well, congrats Noa for a very good job! Maybe we could have another chapter with Soujiro blowing his brains out -Sorry, maybe I shouldn't have wrote that, now I'll have to rate this R, for violence. O oops... congrats anyway! Now I'm waiting for the other fics to finish too!

4- I'm also anxiously waiting for the next chapter of 'Black flower memorial' (God I hope that's the right name!) and of that other fic, which name I can't remember (I'm soooooo sorry) where Aoshi marries Misao, but then leaves her for his ex-wife Megumi (who apparently is a bitch, I don't know). I hope all these fics out there develop and get to be great fics! Of course, for all Misao/Aoshi fans, we can't help but feel frustrated with some fics that aren't advancing, such as 'Deep Within' (which happens to be the only fic that makes me cry) and 'Of Love and Honor'.

Well, it's enough! Thanks for read (the chapter and my ramblings) and a VERY HAPPY 2003!!!

MaRiAnA-chan**


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